Kobe Bryant, left, Steve Nash and the Lakers, <A href="http://www.denverpost.com/nuggets/ci_22335935/rockets-beat-lakers-125-112-5th-straight-win">who lost their fourth straight Tuesday to fall to 15-19</A>, are in 11th place in the Western Conference.

While I pondered attending Oxford, I determined that the U.K. winters would, alas, be too unbearable, so I instead settled on Missouri. It was there I began to understand your Lakers thing.

See, Missouri was always OK at basketball. But Kansas, these hated prima donnas with their fancy jump shots that go in the basket, ugh, they always seemed to win. And so, the few times Kansas actually lost, really, it felt like a Missouri win.

And so it is, I can somewhat relate to the joy you Nuggets fans are feeling. The Lakers, who ended Denver’s season in three of the past five years, stink. It is, however, perplexingly preposterous, due to the fact they have Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Steve Nash and Pau Gasol (is he the best “fourth-best” guy in NBA history?). But L.A. is 15-19 and 11th in the Western Conference — four games out of the eight spot, currently held by Denver.

“There’s no guarantee (that the Lakers make the playoffs),” Nash told reporters after Tuesday’s loss at Houston. “I think three or four weeks ago, people would have said, ‘Ah, it will get better.’ Now I definitely don’t think there’s a guarantee it will, so the only remedy is continue to work hard and give yourself a chance for it to get better.

“I obviously think with time, and that might mean through the summer, we can get better. But for this season, it’s definitely going to be a challenge to turn this around.”

Curious, I asked my Twitter followers about their take of the Lake Horror Show. Do they find joy in the Lakers’ losing? Here were some of the responses:

• @ZakkCOGZ yes, hate them more than anything I can think of

• @sami41 yes. the same kind of twisted joy I get when the yankees lose. I think it’s all because I cannot stand kobe.

• @stine_co Don’t really care. Don’t define myself as a Nuggets fan in relation to how much I dislike another team. Only Nuggets Ws count

• @shawnielsen Overjoyed! As a smaller market team, its nice to see ‘teamness’ win out over the big cash money wad this one time.

• @TheNameIsWolfe It’s suppressed joy….something inside tells me they will somehow be just as good as before in a couple of years…like always

• @Brooke_Cale Because they and their fans are so “Hollywood” and spoiled, I love seeing them get their comeuppance. Ya’ done got old, Lakers.

• @newman1601 I love it. Its my favorite part of sportscenter recently. And watching kobe answer question after question is priceless too

• @torerodrizzle I’m full of schadenfreude when it comes to the lakers.

So Tuesday on Facebook (or was it Friendster? I get my social media mixed up), my sportswriter buddy Arash Markazi asked a question. Arash (who writes for ESPNLA.com) wondered — Honest question: If the Lakers don’t make the playoffs, is this the most disappointing team in sports history?

And I responded with: “It’s gotta be. … From a financial standpoint, you can bring up last year’s Red Sox, but this is on a grander scale — two of the leagues top five big men, one of the three best point guards and one of the three best shooting guards and they don’t even MAKE the playoffs?”

Lastly, I will say this. Yes, the Lakers are in disarray right now. But for however much I’d want to believe, every March I’d never believe Kansas would not go to the Final Four. And so, as long as the Lakers actually make the playoffs, I wouldn’t count them out in regards to at least winning a series. But if this Lakers nucleus doesn’t at least get to the conference finals, then I say it was a failure.

Visit denverpost.com each weekday near noontime for a serving of dish concerning Colorado’s sporting landscape from a Denver Post sports writer. Care for another helping? Visit the Lunch Special archive.

Benjamin Hochman was a sports columnist for The Denver Post until August 2015 before leaving for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, his hometown newspaper. Hochman previously worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for its Hurricane Katrina coverage. Hochman wrote the Katrina-themed book “Fourth and New Orleans,” published in 2007.

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